Excert

At about eleven o’clock we stopped at a dim diner. A little greasy-spoon affair with truckers winding down and moonlighting housewives pouring coffee thick and black like used motor oil. Smoke hung in the air and had stained everything nicotine yellow. Everyone fat, everyone slow-even the flies could only mange a precursory float, barely hanging, drifting on the air like bloated zeppelins. Christopher and me walked in looking like lithe aliens. We took a look. We took a booth-ripped of course and hastily “repaired” with green duct tape.


Christopher surprised me an ordered the entire menu like a death row inmate on his last night. Granted it was only a worn single page (yellowed of course) but it was still impressive. I raised my eyebrow quizzically. He shrugged it off.


“I’m hungry. I haven’t eaten since…. this morning?”


“Yeah and even then you had mine too.”


“You’re not hungry are you?”


The secret is that I am hungry. I could snap at any time. I could eat the layers of grease off the griddle in this pit. Every second is a fight against flesh.


“No Daddy, I’m not hungry. Although I could go for some gum I didn’t think to pack a toothbrush.”


“Drink some coffee.” He nudges a mug toward me and the content seems to jiggle like Jello.


“This late? I need to sleep.”


“There’s still a long drive ahead of us.”


“Where are we going?”


“The City.”


“Why?”



“To find you a place to stay.”


Christopher has been beating around the bush ever since we left the church in the morning. I’ll all for adventure but I’d at least like a handle on my destination. I think he senses my apprehension.


“Don’t worry, I think I know of place where you can hang out for a while and clear your head. You know, get your wits about you and prepare for your ministry. Kind of like me. When I got out of the seminary I spent a year wandering around Europe. Even Christ needed his forty-days away in the mountains.”


I smile for his sake and shrug off my wandering mind. “I just wish I could’ve went home for my toothbrush.”